Disclaimer: I don't own Fairly Odd Parents.
A/N: Constructive criticism welcomed, particularly on characterization. If Losing Streak is on a losing streak, tell me so I can fix it. This fanfic is multi-chaptered so if you got an Alert for this chapter, you should go and read it from the beginning or else it won't make any sense. If Norm seems to be better with words than anyone his age would be, his snarkiness and ability at messing up wishes indicates that he probably is better with words than most people his age (whatever it is at any point of Losing Streak, other than babyhood, in which he can't talk).
Chapter 10: Whys, Hows and Whats
Even if Norm now knew the name of the purple object, he still didn't like it. It was too constricting, too confining. He guessed that his lava lamp was connected to why he had grant wishes and that escaping it would be hard or impossible.
However, he had figured out that he could GONG up stuff to put in it. Norm had decided that the sound made when granting a wish was called a GONG because that was how it sounded.
He had GONGed up animal fur to sleep on because humans slept on it. He had a firepit for the same reason. Norm had GONGed up some clay statuettes and other pretty things he had seen the humans making, holding and owning. When he was hungry, he GONGed up the meat, roots and berries that he had seen the humans eating. Norm had never met any other spirits so, he didn't know whether they had more than humans had, though the weird cylinder things with tops like nipples and the weird wooden box with bars and soft material indicated that there was a lot more to the world than the humans had discovered.
According to humans, there were more spirits than him and Norm wondered if he'd meet them sometime. He wondered if the other spirits would be kinder to him than the humans were. Humans did say that there were both good and bad spirits, so Norm figured good spirits would be kind to him, though considering that the humans probably meant their definition of good not his, maybe good spirits would act the way humans did.
Norm guessed the spirits had trapped him in his infernal lava lamp and sent him to the mortal world because he was meant to become a hero. The stories told by the humans always tended to go that way. Maybe he just had to endure being trapped until his time for heroing came. If that even was why...
Norm felt the pull that meant a human was rubbing his lamp. He sighed in relief. No more endless lamp boredom.
"I'm Norm the Spirit!" shouted Norm, "thanks for giving me something to do other than mope in my stupid lava lamp! You get three wishes because I'm forced to do so by my dumb lava lamp!"
The human was a male and seemed to be on a hunting trip.
"Stop complaining about your lamp!" yelled the human, "I am not interested in the complaints of a spiritual brat!"
"Spiritual brat," said Norm, "Don't your legends say that the spirits will get revenge on you if you insult them – like say calling them a 'brat?'"
"Sorry, I'll sacrifice a deer to the spirits to appease them," said the human.
"If by sacrifice you mean, burn and pray to the sky then put in a little natural nook, that's not going to appease me."
"But, doesn't that appease all the other spirits?"
Norm recalled the legends and other times that people had sacrificed stuff to the spirits. People did burn food, pray to the sky and put it in a little natural nook and it did seem to appease the spirits. Maybe he was an unusual spirit or not even a spirit at all. Maybe there were more types of magical creatures than spirits. Maybe spirits were just the humans' name for something else and they made up most of what they believed about them. Maybe spirits were an entirely made up concept. Whatever they were, Norm was starting to doubt he actually was one.
"Fine, I suppose that I'm not really a spirit," said Norm, "But I'm not sure what else I could be."
"I don't care about your soul-searching," said the human annoyed, "I wish we were back at my tent. My life-mate expects me home by now."
GONG!
Norm and the human appeared inside the human's tent. His life-mate greeted him with joy and enquired about why the spirit was there. The human explained how the spirit had said he wasn't, though he at first believed he was.
"What? But there aren't any other kinds of mystical beings! That's heresy!"
"I'm the mystical being here," said Norm, "I exist. My existence shouldn't be heresy and if it is, I won't kill myself just because you guys say I'm heresy."
"I wish I had caught more animals, and I wish that the animal fur was more comfortable," said the man in a rush, trying to get rid of Norm before the shaman found out about his heresy.
"Wow, you're quick!"
GONG!
More animals appeared in the tent.
GONG!
More berries appeared, both in Norm's lamp and in the human's tent.
GONG!
The animal fur became more comfortable both in the tent and Norm's lamp.
Norm was sucked into it and when he was fully sucked in, the man threw the lamp out of his tent and in front of someone else's tent.